PASADENA >> Many of them have a mental illness, most are addicted to drugs and too many have died on the streets of Pasadena.

But over the last two years some of Pasadena’s chronically homeless have found permanent housing and turned their lives around thanks to Project Housed Pasadena.

The program, led by the Pasadena Housing Department with participation from various local agencies, began in August 2011 as part of Common Ground’s national 100,000 Homes campaign. So far, it has housed 48 people.

Anne Lansing, project director for the city of Pasadena, said the city started the program because the most vulnerable homeless in the city couldn’t find help any other way.

“Pasadena has a lot of really strong homeless services here,” Lansing said, adding that many homeless people are able to find help through local programs. “But there is a larger group of people who are the chronically homeless, and those folks for whatever reason are not able to resolve their issues on their own and aren’t able to meet the requirements for most homeless programs. So they remain on the street.”

Lansing said many homeless programs require clients be clean and sober, not be on psychiatric medication or require them to become self sufficient after a certain amount of time. These requirements, she said, are nearly impossible for some of the chronically homeless to meet, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get help.

“Studies have shown that for this population the best way to serve them is put them directly into housing, and once they are in housing, meet them where they are with services,” Lansing said. “You solve the homelessness first, and then you work on the other issues.”

Though some criticize such programs as funding housing for people who are still abusing drugs or alcohol, Lansing said the program has been wildly successful. One of their first clients, Dorothy Edwards, who was the subject of a special report published in the Los Angeles News Group last week, went from being homeless for 40 years while heavily addicted to drugs to becoming clean and sober and starting her life over.

And Edwards is just one example of the program’s success, Lansing said.

“What we are finding is there are a lot of cases that are similar to Dorothy’s, where when they get housed, then they are able to be in a place where they say this is another issue I have going on,” Lansing said. “Having the security of housing allows them to be in a place where they can address those issues.”

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Nearly all of the people housed through the program so far have remained off the streets, she added.

Participants in Project Housed receive housing vouchers from the city, funded through federal grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Once they are housed, they receive services from nonprofit group Housing Works, funded by more than $280,000 in assistance from United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Corporation for Supportive Housing.

Lansing said the Housing Department initially identified 80 people who fit the criteria of “vulnerable” in a three-day survey of 250 people they found living on the streets of Pasadena. From there they first targeted the most likely to die on the streets.

Since its inception, the program has begun working closely with Huntington Hospital to identify homeless people who are chronic guests at the emergency room. Since July 2012, Huntington has referred 21 people to the program, six of whom are now housed, four of whom have gone missing or moved away and 11 of whom are in the process of being housed.

“It’s essential for us because at least we know we are discharging them knowing they are going to have good follow-up, and hopefully they will get stable housing,” said Bill Mejia, social work manager at Huntington Hospital.

Mollie Lowery, program director of Housing Works, said Pasadena’s housing program has been one of the most successful among the cities Housing Works has joined with because of the city’s commitment to housing participants quickly. Most people can have a roof over their heads within two weeks of the program making contact, whereas in some other cities it can take six months, she said.

“It works so much better when we can go to a homeless person who doesn’t think anything promising is going to come through because they’ve heard it before,” Lowery said. “It really helps us to have a housing department that will step up to the plate and really move things along. So when we say to this person we can get you housed and they have a subsidy in their hands in two weeks, that’s reality to them.”

And the program isn’t just beneficial to the homeless, it also saves the hospital and the city money my targeting spending on programs that will actually help them, said Housing Department Director Bill Huang.

“There is a whole economic argument for why we do this program,” Huang said. “Ultimately, people will say, why do you spend so much money on these chronically homeless people? Well, because we have spent a tremendous amount of money on them already through the use of these expensive systems we have in society. We actually save money by spending money on them in the right way.”